Analysis Topic: Interest Rates and the Bond Market

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Run for the Exits
Early on Tuesday morning, realizing this was going to be a robust selloff in equities, the ‘smart money’, i.e., the big banks, investments banks, hedge funds and the like, ran to the old staple of buying bonds hand over fist with little regard for the yield they are getting paid for stepping in front of the freight train of rate rises coming down the tracks.

I have always argued that quantitative easing and zero percent interest rates were misguided policies to combat economic weakness. But as the years went on, misguided turned into irresponsible, which led to ridiculous, and then turned into dangerous. But lately, the only word that comes to mind is "surreal." How should we react when central bankers begin to speak like Willie Wonka?

Monday, March 09, 2015

There has been quite a bit of chatter recently about interest rates in the US with many proclaiming interest rates are now headed up. Are these voices right? Having just analysed the technicals of the 30 Year US Treasury Bonds, it is my considered opinion that they are both right and wrong.

Keeping in mind that interest rates go up as bond prices go down, let’s investigate the price charts and we’ll mix it up by starting with the monthly chart first.

Friday, March 06, 2015

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Tuesday, March 03, 2015

Bill Gross of Janus Capital spoke with Bloomberg Television's Trish Regan about the outlook for Federal Reserve policy, the U.S. economy and his objectives at Janus Capital.

On what he aims to do at Janus, Gross said: "I wanted to show clients and to show the world, to the extent that they're interested, that I can continue to produce a track record like I did at PIMCO. I won't have five to 10 to 15 years of leeway like I had at PIMCO in terms of proving that. But certainly for the next two, three or four years. I'm a very competitive person and I like to post numbers that are better than the market and better than the competition."

Sunday, March 01, 2015

‘If you’re committed enough, you can make any story work. I once told a woman I was Kevin Costner, and it worked because I believed it’ – Saul Goodman – Breaking Bad

“As calamitous as the sub-prime blowup seems, it is only the beginning. The credit bubble spawned abuses throughout the system. Sub-prime lending just happened to be the most egregious of the lot, and thus the first to have the cockroaches scurrying out in plain view. The housing market will collapse. New-home construction will collapse. Consumer pocketbooks will be pinched. The consumer spending binge will be over. The U.S. economy will enter a recession.” – Eric Sprott – 2007

Saturday, February 28, 2015

“At this juncture, the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained.” – Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, Congressional testimony, March, 2007

“Capitalism without financial failure is not capitalism at all, but a kind of socialism for the rich.” – James Grant, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer

The Federal Reserve issued their fourth quarter Report on Household Debt and Credit last week to the sounds of silence in the mainstream media. There were minor press releases issued by the “professional” financial journalists regurgitating the Federal Reserve’s storyline. Actual analysis, connecting the dots, describing how the massive issuance of student loan and auto loan debt has produced a fake economic recovery, and how the accelerating default rates in auto loans and student loans will produce the next subprime debt implosion, were nowhere to be seen on CNBC, Bloomberg, the WSJ, or any other status quo propaganda media outlet. Their job is not to analyze or seek truth. Their job is to keep their government patrons and Wall Street advertisers happy, while keeping the masses sedated, misinformed, and pliable.

Saturday, February 28, 2015

There is an obsession in the marketplace over the date when the Fed will once again begin to raise rates. As if another 25 basis points is going to change the economics on tens of trillions of dollars of investments. But as we reflect on the issue more deeply, it becomes obvious that a minor bump in the fed funds rate will indeed change a great deal of economics all over the world.

No, it won’t do much to the cap rate on your latest real estate purchase, but it is likely to greatly affect the pricing of the currency and commodity markets. And those markets will affect corporate profits, which will affect the stock market. It’s all connected.

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Some things never change. Here is Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, one of the founding intellectuals of the Austrian school of economics, writing in January 1914, lambasting politicians for their complicity in the corruption of monetary policy:

We have seen innumerable variations of the vexing game of trying to generate political contentment through material concessions. If formerly the Parliaments were the guardians of thrift, they are today far more like its sworn enemies. Nowadays the political and nationalist parties ... are in the habit of cultivating a greed of all kinds of benefits for their co-nationals or constituencies that they regard as a veritable duty, and should the political situation be correspondingly favorable, that is to say correspondingly unfavorable for the Government, then political pressure will produce what is wanted. Often enough, though, because of the carefully calculated rivalry and jealousy between parties, what has been granted to one has also to be conceded to others — from a single costly concession springs a whole bundle of costly concessions. [emphasis mine]

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Business Insider's Myles Udland just posted a chart, drawn from research by the Bank of England, showing interest rates for the past 3,000 years. And for all those who've been feeling like today's "new normal" is actually profoundly abnormal, here's your proof. It turns out that interest rates, both long and short-term, are lower than they've ever been. Not lower than in this cycle, or post-war or in the past century, but ever, going back to the earliest days of markets.

Monday, February 23, 2015

Confounded Interestjust posted a nice summary of a McKinsey report on the growth of global debt during what some persist in calling the "great deleveraging." Turns out that since the crisis of 2008, debt has actually risen by $57 trillion, and the ratio of debt to GDP is up 17 percentage points to 286%. Meanwhile, central banks are monetizing 100% of newly-issued sovereign debt.

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Today marks the Chinese New Year, the day promised for unleashing forces from the East which complete the Global Paradigm Shift. Let it rain; let it pour. For a full generation, the Western central bankers have relied upon debt to solve debt saturation problems as well as economic slowdowns founded within the credit cycle. In the last four years, they have added reliance upon free cost printed money to solve debt saturation and insolvency problems. The USTreasury Bond market has vanished for all practical legitimate purposes, a harbinger of the USDollar death event. With no surprise to the Jackass, the entire Western financial and economic system is not just decaying, but failing.

Monday, February 16, 2015

We have shown so far that all ruble crises were accompanied by a strong U.S. dollar and low oil prices. We have concluded that Russia's current problems resemble those from 1998, though possibly even more severe than seventeen years ago, because the biggest country in the world is cut off from the international funding. But what about the following banking crisis in Russia?

Monday, February 16, 2015

Brendan Brown writes: The announcement of the euro-QE was not the start of Europe’s monetary Dark Age. That started many years ago with Chancellor Kohl’s undermining of the “hard deutsche mark Bundesbank” in the late 1980s. The darkness further descended when the newly created European Central Bank (ECB) implemented monetary frameworks which essentially tied Europe into a global 2-percent-inflation standard, following the US Federal Reserve.

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Well, here we go again. I do not know how many times over the past year or so I have noted what looked like a chart breakdown in the US long bond. By that I specifically mean a close BELOW the 50 day moving average. Generally, that will get technicians to sit up and take notice and begin to approach a market from the short side. Each time I have noted this however, the bonds have done a flip-a-roo and back up they have gone continuing the bull streak.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Gary Cohn, President and COO of Goldman Sachs, joined Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Brad Stone for an interview on Bloomberg TV. He spoke about the company's investments in the technology industry, regulation of the financial industry and the outlook for oil prices and Federal Reserve policy

When asked whether we will see a rate increase this year, Cohen said: "The Fed is in a very tough position...They’re going to be constrained by circumstances, going to be concerned about the strength of the dollar, and other countries are going to continue to devalue.”

Monday, February 09, 2015

Today’s obvious mispricing of sovereign bonds is a bonanza for spending politicians and allows over-leveraged banks to build up their capital. This mispricing has gone so far that negative interest rates have become common: in Denmark, where the central bank persists in holding the Krona peg to a weakening Euro, it is reported that even some mortgage rates have gone negative, and high quality corporate bonds such as a recent Nestlé euro bond issue are also flirting with negative yields.

Saturday, February 07, 2015

Yesterday, China’s Central Bank reduced bank reserve requirements for large banks by 50 basis points to 19.5%. The Chinese know that the nominal level of national income is determined by the magnitude of the money supply. They also know that banks produce the lion’s share of China’s money. Indeed, banks produce 77% of China’s M2 money.

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